‘Act Three: Reshaping Publics’ is a well-articulated and forward-thinking look at the effects of social media on the public sphere. I especially like your comments on collapsing contexts and (de)locability. It will be interesting to see how Gen-Y (who have been using social media as a “hangout space”) will evolve with these changes and use social media in the professional world.

Thinking about stuff.
New Blog.

B.

John – I think of these in terms of distinct contexts with different social norms. There are indeed challenges to context collisions.

I’m not sure I understand. Would you mind giving an example or two?

John – I think of these in terms of distinct contexts with different social norms. There are indeed challenges to context collisions.

I was wondering about other effects apart from the ‘network effects’ shaping social network sites. What about the ‘field effects’ of the myriad of fields of practice that cut across a site such as facebook (e.g. journalism, law, sociology, art, etc.)? For example, an art practitioner’s facebook actitivities are presumably strongly shaped by his or her specialist field, e.g. they would be careful not to anger influential senior practitioners for fear of damaging their career prospects. And what about ‘organisational effects’ and how employees (one would guess) take care not to be rude about their employers?

How do the network effects in these sites interact with other types of effects (of fields, organisations, markets, action-sets, etc.)?

Agile development is simply not that agile or inclusive in practice.

Yeah really. The principles are great; the best agile groups are quite good at thinking from a customer perspective; but “inclusive”? Usually, not so much.

jon

However – for me it didn’t really crack what I think is the fundamental difference about social media and the real reason it is here to stay. For me this is simply the fact that content has become separated (or liberated) from its means of distribution and flowing from this the vast increase in stuff (often derided as nonsense)out there and, critically, the evolving processes of connectivity that converts this stuff into intelligence. It is why social media is not just an evolution of things that were there before (and also why social media isn’t the best descriptor – I prefer socialised information)

The resulting impact, at the level of society, is the shift from institutions to process and the consequent threat this posses to said institutions. Note – these are not just media institutions – a bank, for example, at its heart is just an institutionalised mediator of information about money.

The big mistake people make, not just in the traditional media but also in social media, is to assume that some institutionalised form of mediation will, or must emerge, if the proceses we call social media are to evolve. This is because institutionalised forms are all we have ever known. Hence also the confusion between the influence of blogs (institutional way of looking at things) and blogging (process way of looking at things).

Have been commissioned to write a lengthy piece on this – http://tinyurl.com/bwxh3j – not quite a dissertation but at 8,000 words it feels it passes as such in the “info-bite” era. Shorter distillation I have put here – http://tinyurl.com/bcfc7p. Presented as slidshare here http://tinyurl.com/67kfwn

Welcome your thoughts / challenges

I spend a lot of time doing similar presentations for business groups but, interestingly, for middle schools, high schools and universities. I took particular interest in section II of your talk, as I hit a lot of these same points in my talks. I’m sure you were referencing the Berkman study that is also mentioned in the terrific new book “Born Digital.” The takeaway for me is that so often we fight things that we fear (in this case predation) instead of the ACTUAL problem which, very often, is peer to peer harassment. This is not a condition specific to the internet. The condition seems to be a basic human one.

Anyway, thanks for the great post. Social media IS here to stay and while Facebook may well go the way of Friendster, the methods of communication are not changing.